State defends greenhouse gas program

Plaintiffs part of a cause, not damaged by program, Schneiderman says

Published 12:00 am, Friday, September 9, 2011

ALBANY -- The state is seeking to dismiss a lawsuit that would force abandonment of a multi-state program that controls greenhouse gas emissions from power plants to combat man-made climate change.

"This lawsuit was not filed because of the individual plaintiffs suffering any injury from the program -- but as part of a cause to bring down RGGI in New York," according to legal papers filed last week by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in state Supreme Court in Albany County.

In July, a group tied to conservative Kansas petrochemical billionaires who fund campaigns to deny climate change sued to kill the state's participation in the 10-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

The lead plaintiff was the Buffalo leader of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political action group supported by oilmen David and Charles Koch that is linked to the tea party movement.

Schneiderman argued the plaintiffs had not shown how they were specifically harmed by RGGI, and had waited too long from the program's 2008 start to make their objections.

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Spearheaded by former GOP Gov. George Pataki, RGGI is the nation's first state-level greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program, in which power plants must buy enough state-issued permits to cover emissions of carbon dioxide, which an international scientific consensus blames as the cause of man-made climate change.

Opponents dismiss the consensus, which includes the national scientific academies of more than three dozen of the world's major industrialized nations, as a massive fraud.

The lawsuit categorizes RGGI as an illegal tax because Pataki launched the program in 2005 without approval from the state Legislature. AFP and tea party supporters have been pushing to undo RGGI in other states, including New Jersey -- where Republican Gov. Chris Christie this summer said the state would drop out -- as well as Delaware, New Hampshire and Maine.